


If Only the Green Grass Knows

by dixiehellcat



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Magic, Bullying, First Meetings, Gen, Kid Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22625932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: A foundling raised by two fae warriors, little Anthony is shunned for preferring human gadgets to weapons and magic. He finally finds a group of friends, who take up the challenge of helping him unearth the mystery of his origins.For Tony Stark Bingo, square A5 'AU-Fantasy', card 3028, spring 2020.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Sam Wilson, Pepper Potts & James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Tony Stark and Clint Barton and Sam Wilson
Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1765129
Kudos: 38
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo, Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	If Only the Green Grass Knows

Anthony was trying to figure out how the tiny metal bits went back into their round case when he heard his dads calling for him. He scooped the lot up in the silk kerchief he was using as a workspace and got up from his spot under the big wandwood tree behind their cottage. It was supposed to be a family day at home, but when he drew closer he saw both his dads were armed and suited up in leather working armors. Dad Clint’s long bow and quiver of arrows were hung across his back, and Pop Sam had a case of javelins over one shoulder half-concealed by his wings.

“There you are, rascal.” Dad Clint pulled him in for a hug, then Pop Sam fussed a bit over the dirt on his tunic and trousers. Anthony giggled and ducked under Pop Sam’s half-spread wing; he was almost too tall for that now, but he still loved to hide under the feathers of grey and black and crimson. 

“He’s growing so fast,” Pop Sam said. Anthony heard parents of his playmates say that, but not with this tone. It sounded like they were proud, but a little worried or upset too. They shouldn’t be, though. Of course he was going to grow up! Everybody grew up, even here in the fae lands where time ran differently than it did in the humans’. Folk said humans grew up and old in a flash, and _died_ , even, whatever that meant exactly. Anthony wanted to figure all of that out. He was going to grow up and become the greatest scientist the fae had ever seen, and he would start with the broken gadget wrapped in the silk.

“Hush, of course he is. Come along, squirt. Your pop and I got called out to patrol the borderlands, so it’s off to the Glade with you for the day.” Anthony tried not to grimace, but with Dad Clint looking right at him like he was supper about to meet an arrow, his expression must have said it all. “What’s up, son?”

“I get bored in the Glade. We’re too little to play with the big kids, and all anybody does is practice fighting or magic anyway.”

“Didn’t you take one of your, what do the humans call ‘em, mechanicals, with you last time?” Pop Sam squatted beside him and gently poked at the wad of cloth Anthony clasped in his little fists. “Those always keep you busy.”

“The other kids don’t care. They just ask why I care about messing with machines.” He let out the heavy sigh of a small child. “My birth parents must not have had any talents at all. You and Dad Clint could have done a lot better than me.”

The two men gasped almost in unison. “Now listen here, pal,” Dad Clint said and crouched too, making Anthony look him in the eye. “The minute we saw you, we both loved you. Otherwise, we would never have petitioned Queen Sarah to allow us to keep you and raise you. Now, granted, parenting was a bigger job than either of us expected, it wasn’t quite like raising puppies, but still—”

Pop Sam smacked him, but he was laughing, and so was Dad Clint, and after a minute of seeing them, Anthony couldn’t help but smile a little too. “We wanted you, Anthony, with all our hearts,” Pop Sam agreed. “We know we’re not perfect, but we want to be the best dads for you that we can be.”

They both hugged him at once, and he felt safer as they saddled up and the three started toward the Children’s Glade. He thought, as he had more and more as he got older, about asking them what they knew about his origins, if anything. He could tell from their sudden noisy good humor, though, that that was not a subject they wanted to get into just now. Besides, if they were going to the borders for the day, that meant they might have a chance to slip into the human lands, so if he stayed on their good side he might be able to wheedle some treats. He twisted around a little, where he rode in front of Dad Clint on his horse Lucky. “Are you gonna bring back some chocolate?” he asked, all wide eyes and innocence. “And maybe another gadget?”

“Oh no!” Pop Sam declared from his hover alongside them. “You are not sneaking over again, Clinton. That’s how we got into this—”

“What your pop means,” Dad Clint interrupted loudly, “is that we can’t promise anything, but we’ll see.”

There they went again, starting to say things and then not saying enough. Sneaking over the border got them into something? What? Anthony suppressed a small huff and sat back against his dad’s chest, his little mind turning over the few words and hints.

When they reached the Glade, Pop Sam scooped Anthony off the horse and into the air. Anthony loved to fly; he poked at his back nearly every day, wondering if there was some way he could encourage those bones to sprout baby wings like Janet, a girl in his playgroup. As they came in for a landing at his group’s grove, he could see her delicate little winglets flapping behind her as she ran. Everyone seemed so small from the air—he didn’t remember them like that, though it’d been a while since he’d spent any time at the Glade.

“Samuel!” Madam Winifred, the warder of the youngest group, came to greet them. Her son James was the prince’s betrothed, and a friend of both his dads. “Who is thi—Anthony?” She stopped and looked so shocked that Anthony looked down at himself to see what the problem was. He couldn’t shapeshift, and he wasn’t all that dirty, so why wouldn’t she recognize him? “He’s too big for my group, Samuel! You must take him to Master Fury’s.”

“Winnie!” Pop Sam protested. “Those kids are twice his size, plus…” 

Master Fury’s group were big kids, all right. They were starting to study real warcraft and magic, getting ready to enter apprenticeships and learn all the things needed to be a successful part of fae society in the realm of Queen Sarah Hrod-Gari. Kids never changed groups either! They started with the group of younglings their size and age and stayed with them. Anthony looked around the grove, and saw Pietro spinning in circles like a ninny. Bet and Ned were playing with stones, making stacks and then trying to push them over. Wanda was toying with her small magics, thin strings of carmine smoke and light pushing back against the other children to hold the tiny towers of rocks upright. A couple of the other children looked over and saw him; they looked surprised too, and even a little scared. 

They all looked small, and immature, and suddenly he did not want to be there. He started to beg his dads to take him home. The queen liked them, and surely she would excuse them just this once from duty. He could go back under his tree and work on the widget in his tunic pocket. Before he could speak, though, his dads were walking quickly with him across the Glade to another grove of trees. This one was situated around a small clearing, where two groups of kids appeared to be facing off in a mock battle. He was supposed to go to Master Fury’s group, but these younglings didn’t look like giants, the way he remembered them. Sure, they were bigger than him, but not by that much, and how was it that he was _sure_ he had not been this size, just a short spell of time ago? Something was happening, time was different in the fae lands, certainly, but not so odd that one small foundling boy would suddenly grow so much faster than his peers.

When Anthony pulled himself from his thoughts to look around him, two very important things had happened. His fathers were gone, and the other children in the group had encircled him. “Hey,” scowled one boy, so big he could have been part troll, with a makeshift club propped on his shoulder, “who are you?”

“Can you fight?” a blonde girl asked. “Or cast spells? Whatever you’re good at, we’ll choose a side for you and get back to our fight.”

“Even if he can’t do anything, we’ll take him,” a skinny boy snickered from beside the big guy. “He’s so little, Brock could pick him up and throw him at you guys. Handy projectile, if nothing else.”

“I can’t do any of that stuff yet,” Anthony said. “I’m good at building things and fixing stuff, though. I’m trying to fix this.” He pulled the kerchief from his pocket and revealed his prize project. “I gotta figure out what it does, then I can make it do that thing.”

A general groan greeted that announcement, as he expected. The big boy, Brock, reached out as if to snatch it away. “Some dumb little piece of metal isn’t any good in a battle of fell fae forces! We don’t need stupid human tricks. Or, maybe _you_ do. Maybe you’re a stupid human, little and weak.”

“I’m not!” Anthony yelled and stomped over to get right in his face (as much as he could, considering the height difference). Brock’s skinny second shoved him. Anthony stumbled over a root and sat down hard on the ground. One hand lunged out to catch himself; the other clutched the silk and its contents, and he hoped he hadn’t bent the metal bits beyond hope of repair.

Two more voices suddenly rode over the rising ruckus, both sounding very, very angry. One belonged to a girl shouting the two lead bullies down; the other, to a slim boy who pushed past them and knelt beside Anthony. “Are you okay?” he asked, and looked like he really wanted to know the answer.

“Yeah, I’m all right.” Anthony caught his breath, shoved the wad of silk into his pocket and rubbed his backside. Master Fury had come over to break up the fracas, and the girl who had yelled, her face almost as red as her hair now, stormed out of the small crowd and over to him. She grumbled under her breath and put out a hand. “I’m sorry to be such a bother,” he went on meekly.

“Sorry?” She threw her hands in the air. “Bother? Brock is a walking bother! By the runes of Phineas, why can’t he just shift into a frog and be gone to the nearest swamp?”

“He’d be fat enough to make for a bit of good eating, at least,” muttered the boy beside him with a brief glint of wishful hope in his dark eyes. “C’mon, kid, you didn’t know to stay far afield from them, so we’ll correct that little error. I’m James, by the way, but there being several of us with that name, I go by my clan’s name, Rhodes, around here. That’s Virginia.”

“That’s a calm name, for somebody so ardent,” Anthony told her as he got up and dusted his butt off (Dad Sam wasn’t there to make him, but habits). “Your temper’s as fiery as your hair, and that’s red as a hot pepper. See, folk should call you Pepper. Mages say the name is the thing, don’t they?”

If anything, her face got even redder. Anthony gulped, hoping too late he hadn’t managed to make the only kids who had been nice to him mad, but Rhodes laughed out loud. “He got you in one, Virginia! Or should I say Pepper?” Anthony was certain she mumbled a couple of swear words Dad Clint used regularly, though only when he thought his son was not within hearing distance.

“Ey!” the boy Brock hollered when they turned to walk away. “Fine, you freaks, go your way with your tiny _human_ , he belongs with you.”

“’m not a human,” Anthony said, but was not up for resuming a fight. Besides, what was wrong with humans? They were weaker than fae, sure; they didn’t have magic, or wings, but that didn’t make them bad. “Why’s he call you freaks? Just to be hateful?”

“Eh, I guess we are both kind of freaks,” Rhodes said easily as the three settled on a rock under a big tulip tree. “My parents both have wings, and I should be getting them by now, but,” he turned to show his flat back, “Nothin’.”

“My family are fire mages, but all I have so far is a little healing magic,” Pepper added. Her voice was composed, but a little twist of her mouth spoke of disappointment.

“At least you two know what you’re supposed to be inheriting,” Anthony said. “I’m a foundling, so I don’t even know what my bloodline is, except that apparently it has no talent for anything at all. Well, maybe making things.”

“I saw you had something in your hand there,” Rhodes nodded.

Anthony pulled the packet out and carefully opened it, relieved to see the tiny wheels and teeth of metal were all present and intact. A sudden pain made his fingers clench, and he looked closer and realized his palm was scraped raw where he had caught himself in his fall. The kerchief his work was swaddled in was one of Pop Sam’s best, so he didn’t want to bleed on it. He looked hastily around for a place to lay it, but before he could complete the movement Pepper sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re hurt,” she said. “Ashes and switches! It should’ve been Brock.” She took Anthony’s hand without hesitation, passed her free hand over the torn flesh and whispered, and the scratches and cuts knit back together as he watched.

“Never gonna get tired of watching that,” Rhodes said with a proud grin at her. 

Once Anthony’s wound was healed, Rhodes and Pepper bent their heads over the human contrivance, seeming fascinated as he spread it out and explained what he thought each part and the object as a whole did. “Time moves faster in the human realms, from what my dads say,” he explained, “and so humans have to have more ways of keeping track of it than we do. I think this contraption is a way to measure time. If I can piece it back together, maybe I can compare how it works to how we gauge time here.”

They passed the day together. The battle gang, as Pepper called them, let them be, and they returned the favor. As usual, when they grew hungry, they hunted up fruit to pick; the Glade was rich with all kinds of enchanted trees, and Rhodes knew where the best dawnfruit and mist-berries grew. By afternoon, he was calling Anthony Tony, and Tony calling him Rhodey, and Pepper seemed to tolerate them both quite happily.

The threesome were sprawled on the lush thick grass of a mound debating what they could call their group (Rhodey made a case for Team Strong, while Pepper and Tony preferred Team Smarter Than You Idiots and Prettier Too) when they were interrupted by the rustle and thump of grownup feet. The noise was followed a moment later by the appearance of Tony’s parents. “Anthony!” Dad Clint said with relief. “Come along. We’ve been summoned to accompany Prince Steven on a diplomatic trip, to take counsel on his mum’s behalf with King Pym. It’ll take a few days so we’ve made arrangements for you.”

Tony scrambled to his feet. “I could go!” he argued, though he knew it was a lost cause. When his dads shook their heads, he took another tack. “I can take care of myself. There’s plenty of food at home, and I’m a big boy now. You both said so yourselves, and I’m not with the babies’ group here anymore!”

“Sorry, son,” Pop Sam said. “That’s a no-go. It’s off to the palace with you, where you’ll be safe and eat something other than your dad’s stash of human candy the whole time we’re gone.” Dad Clint looked horribly offended at that suggestion. Tony didn’t know if he was more upset that Pop Sam thought he hadn’t raised Tony better than that, or that Tony might eat up all his chocolate when his back was turned.

“The palace?” Pepper exclaimed, then gulped when Tony’s dads turned their attention to her. Tony awkwardly made introductions, but relaxed when it turned out Pop Sam had flight trained alongside several of Rhodey’s cousins. 

“We need to talk with Master Fury for a moment,” Dad Clint said. “You say goodbye to your pals, and we’ll be right back.”

“Wow,” Rhodey whispered as soon as the adults were out of earshot. “Why does the queen want you there? You’re not really a prince, are you?”

Tony laughed. “Really? You’re going there? No, I’m not. My dads are good friends with Prince Stephen, so when there’s business with other rulers, Dad Clint and Pop Sam always go with. Queen Sarah has always liked me—when my dads found me, they took me to her to ask her leave to keep me and raise me. She’s really nice, and I always end up staying there when they’re afield. She’s got a lot of books to read, but other than that, it’s kind of boring. I’d rather be here with you guys. And she’s always got somebody assigned to follow me around! I guess that’s so I don’t break anything, but I can’t play at all because some page is always scowling at me.”

As though summoned by his words, a stout older boy in the crimson and azure of the royal house tromped into sight. “You’re Anthony, I suppose,” he said in a grouchy tone. “I’m to attend you while you stay with the queen.”

“See?” Tony said to Pepper and Rhodey, and threw up his hands, then turned to the page. “So you’re stuck skulking around behind me, eh?”

“I do not skulk,” the boy fired back and lifted his chin. “I’m Page Harold, and I do not skulk.”

“You don’t look any more thrilled to be doing it than I’m going to be to have you there. In fact, you look miserable. Shall I call you Happy?” The boy’s broad face wrinkled, and Tony felt a pang of regret. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be mean. I certainly did not ask for this!”

To his surprise, Harold relaxed. “So I see,” he said dryly. “I thought I was being sent to attend some noble’s snotty brat, not a cheeky little bit of an elfling with grass stains on his tunic!”

“Oh my,” Pepper said. “He’s right, Tony. You can’t be summoned to the queen’s presence looking like that!” With a horrified look, she started to brush at his clothes until he playfully pushed her off. “I’m serious! She’ll clap you in enchanted irons!”

“Fine. I’ll pick the lock on the dungeon door and go home then.”

Harold, or Happy as the others began to also call him, laughed out loud at that. He asked the same questions about Tony's background that Rhodey and Pepper had, and Tony gave the same answers. “That’s all you know?” Happy scratched his head. “That's not much, to only say you were found. Where? When? Were there any effects with you, any sigils or glyphs, any portents, or identifying signs at all?”

“I like how you think,” Tony nodded. “I don’t know any of that, yet. There’s stuff my dads aren’t telling me, I know it. No time to get into all that right now. You’d know about a lot of those house signs and such, Happy, with you serving the palace. As far as anything else, I’ve got a weird birthmark, but it’s a teeny thing and I don't expect it means anything.” To illustrate, he undid the neck of his tunic so the other three younglings could see a dark splotch no bigger than a berry in the center of his chest.

“Looks like a spider,” Happy offered. 

Pepper huffed. “Do you need a healer for your eyes? Spiders have eight legs. That mark’s only got seven…extensions, or whatever.”

“So, a spider missing a leg,” Rhodey kidded, then yelped and ducked when Pepper pretended to smack him. “You’re right though, Tones, it doesn’t look like much. We’ll have to dig deeper.”

“We?” Tony paused in lacing his tunic neck back up. 

“Of course!” Pepper glared as though it was the most self-evident thing in all the realms of fae. “You’ve given us a mystery, how can we not help you solve it? There have to be clues somewhere. Rhodey’s clan are warriors, so he can ask of them; mine are mages and I can do the same. You’re on your way to the palace, and like you say, Happy knows it inside and out.”

“Well,” Happy tried to look modest, but his eyes sparkled with the promise of mischief, “I know a thing or two. Two dozen. Two hundred, maybe.”

“Excellent,” Tony grinned. “It’ll be a grand adventure, the four of us. And who knows, Rhodey, maybe instead of wings your gift is prophecy. Maybe we’ll find out I’m a prince after all! Come on, Happy.” The two boys trotted off in search of Tony’s dads, to head for the palace.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was Inspired by a rarepair short by reioka (https://archiveofourown.org/works/17262023/chapters/41465435)  
> and approved by the author! If you want to know a little bit about what really happened when Clint found baby Tony (yes, Clint. Sam was not with him at the time; it was another troublemaker. LOL), this is where you should go. It…wasn’t quite the way Clint describes it. Naturally.


End file.
